Mail Order Bride: Arranging Marriages For All Of Her Sisters

By Beth Overton

A young woman tries her hardest to escape the clutches of a woman claiming to be their aunt, who had taken over the family ranch in Colorado when her parents died. She has always looked after her younger siblings and they all plot to escape the harsh woman. Later, she will have the task of arranging marriages for her sisters.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Beth Overton
• Release date: Feb 6, 2016
• ISBN: 9781311361998

Beth Overton

Beth Overton lives in Northern California with her husband and three cats. Besides writing romances, she loves to read everything she can get her hands on, as well as cooking up gourmet delights for her entire family.

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Mail Order Bride: Arranging Marriages For All Of Her Sisters

By

Beth Overton

Copyright 2016 Quietly Blessed & Loved Press

Synopsis: A young woman tries her hardest to escape the clutches of a woman claiming to be their aunt, who had taken over the family ranch in Colorado when her parents died. She has always looked after her younger siblings and they all plot to escape the harsh woman. Later, she will have the task of arranging marriages for her sisters.

Ruth plopped down at the kitchen table in her two-room cabin after a long day in the restaurant. A new group of prospectors and those taking advantage of the government’s land rush program to settle Nevada and California had brought a whole lot of rough characters. However, she saw a lot of gentle folks, too.

As she tried to unwind, she watched her younger sisters sleeping in the other room. The older five boys from her father’s first marriage and two girls had already grown up and moved on. They had no contact with the younger children. Her younger siblings were from their father’s second marriage. As the remaining girls were getting older, she knew it was up to her to make some decisions for their future.

As their older sister, she had stood in as their mother and father for as long as she could remember. She could barely remember their parents as they had originally traveled from New York in a wagon train to Kansas and then again to Horse Head, Colorado. They had just settled in their Horse Head ranch when she noticed her parents were starting to act strange.

Her father and mother seemed to have no interest in keeping the ranch going. The three oldest children took on caring for the land and the animals while the twins, Lily and Phyllis and the second oldest girl, took on the household chores. Marybeth was charged with the care of the younger children, the twins Holly and June and Olivia, the youngest.

One day, she woke to find both of her parents were gone and a strange woman claiming to be their aunt on their mother’s side taking responsibility for them. Heather was a harsh taskmaster. She chose to get rid of the animals and force the boys to take on additional tasks. Despite their best efforts, the ranch was still going downhill.

They even had to take down some of the side rooms of the house to pawn for supplies or burn the wood for heat. The children were forced to sleep on the floor in one room while Heather kept their parent’s room to herself. She didn’t seem to care as long as she was kept warm and comfortable.

You brats aren’t earning your keep, snapped Heather one morning after arriving late for breakfast and complaining about it being cold. I really don’t know what I am going to do with the lot of you.

You could go away, shouted Olivia, the baby of the group.

Or perhaps I could just give you all to the local workhouse, she sneered in Olivia’s face forcing her to cower in fear. I’m good friends with Mr. Lawrence …

Alex, the younger boy, muttered, I bet you are.

You see, young man, Heather continued, leaning into his face, "boys like you do very well in the quarries using pick axes making large rocks into small ones or on the railroad as a shaker for the railway spikes. An even better job than that